The legacy of October
"WHAT is your attitude to the October Revolution in
1917 in Russia and and what impact has it had on your life? What possibilities did it open up and why were the positive possibilities not realized? What is the relevance of that revolution today?"
These were the questions debated at a public discussion attended by about 800 people at Berlin's
Humboldt University on October 25, 1992 organized by IV's German sister publication Inprekor.
Participating were: Gregor Gysi, who recently became leader of the parliamentary group of the
German PDS (successor to the former ruling East
German Communist party) after resigning from the position of party leader; revolutionary Marxist thinker Ernest Mandel; and Oskar Negt, a well- known "1968 generation" left-Socialist intellectual and professor at the University of Hannover.
International Viewpoint #242 February 1993
G YSI: One's feelings about
La historic event is always somewhat complicated, particularly when you are looking at it in an emotional way. Still I stick to the words of Rosa Luxemburg, who once said about Lenin, Trotsky, and the others: "They are the only ones so far, who have the right to say: 'I dared'". We have to learn once more to dare, and not let ourselves be put off, even though it looks as if it doesn't pay to take a chance.
But my attitude to this question is a double one: what interests me in the October Revolution is both its emancipatory promise, and the fact that no real emancipation developed from this. While the French Revolution left behind a series of moral categories, which will keep the intellectual world busy for decades to come, I am today uncertain about what (for example moral categories the October Revolution has left behind.
I think that the October Revolution has also promoted a false approach to the question of power. Now the interpretation of the October Revolution is being provided by the victors: some present it as nothing more than a coup d'etat, forgetting the concrete conditions in which people in Russia were living at that time. One can never morally convict people for wanting to liberate themselves; that is their legitimate right, even if they fail in this attempt.
Negt: Bourgeois democracy in Germa30
### DEBATE ny is also a very late occurrence; it took centuries to break through. Could things go quicker, when you promise to abolish the rule of one human being over another and realize socialist democracy?
Mandel: Comrade Gysi said that the emancipatory tendencies in the October Revolution partially failed. I would not put it that way. Developments in Soviet Russia from 1921, or 1923 or 1928 onwards were not the product of the October Revolution, but the product of a counter-revolution, which you cannot blame on the leaders of the Russian Revolution, in the same way as you cannot blame the crimes of the Napoleonic wars on those who made the French Revolution. Those who carried out the October Revolution were killed by the instigators of the counter-revolution. It is wrong to lump together the victims and the culprits.
Gysi: I did not say why the emancipatory tendencies were not realized. In Mandel's opinion this is because of a counterrevolution. I think this idea is too simplistic, because in order to be able to launch their attack the counter-revolutionaries also had to have their roots inside the framework of the October Revolution. That, at least in the period immediately after the revolution, was related to the power structures which depended on individuals and over which there was little control.
The October Revolution gave a big opportunity to distribute power in a quite different fashion, to achieve decentralization and extensive popular participation. Rosa Luxemburg touched upon this question in her critique of the October Revolution. The discussion about this was absolutely insufficient, including in Lenin's time.
Naturally one of the problems was that the revolution remained isolated in Russia, with all the consequences this had. But one should also ask to what extent can one say that the historic mission of feudalism had been fulfilled in Russia, creating a degree of industrialization which made the bourgeois revolution possible. I ask myself whether the promise of the October Revolution was at all possible to realize at that point and under those conditions, or if its failure was inevitable.
Negt: We must remember that Marx never imagined that socialism could be built alongside capitalism. Socialism was supposed to secure the results that capitalism threatened to dissipate. Only when it sprang out of capitalism in its mature form could a real advance, in the sense of socialist democracy, take place.
Socialist democracy contains not less democracy, criticism and public participation, but more. This was so obvious for Marx that he could not imagine abolishing specific civil liberties, which he criticized even social democrats for doing, for example when they exercised censorship. Lenin also saw himself as a genuine successor and developer of orthodox Marxist
International Viewpoint #242 February 1993 theory as opposed to the Second International.
The Russian Revolution was primarily a product of the First World War. It represented the popular longing to break free from the war. Lenin and Trotsky formulated a practical programme for this: Peace now! All power to the Soviets! All land to the peasants! A domestic and international programme in one.
It was at the same time a programme for democratization and modernization of Russian society, in which now quite contrary mechanisms — grounded in Russia's backwardness — were growing ever stronger. Taylorism was adopted out of necessity, not inclination, because as Lenin insisted the social subjects lacked the work morality that it took 400 years to achieve
This meant that the party took on functions quite different from those assumed by a normal socialist party: it became the organizing centre of society and had socializing function as regards labour discipline. The party thus took on more than its health could bear, no matter what Lenin intended. Perhaps we should see the rise of Stalin not simply as an accidental deviation from this line of development.
The question of the Stalinist degeneration is more complex. We need to make clear the internal causes of the degeneration of the revolution and learn from this. The liquidation of public participation and independent trade unions — which are social organizations which must also deal with the state and not only the "infant school" of socialism - shows that there was no real advance here, no "going beyond" (Aufhebung) in the dialectical sense; only the negative moment of liquidation took place.
Mandel: I agree that the question of power is central to assessing the destiny of the Russian Revolution. But I have a different approach to this question.
Marx's greatest contribution to revolutionary theory lies in one central concept: the liberation of the working class can only be accomplished by the working class itself. We have to take this literally: the working class. To someone who says "but look at this working class — it will take it a long time" my reply would be "okay, then it will have to take a long time. But there is no other possibility. To replace the working class with some other subject leads to disaster."
This is the main lesson that we have to draw, not only from the historical impasse of Stalinism and post-Stalinism, but also from the historical impasse of social democracy. Stalinists, social democrats, and all kinds of dogmatists and sectarians say the same thing: The workers are incapable of emancipating themselves. They are backward, corrupted, declassé, integrated. But if this is true then emancipation is impos-
Here the critics of the October Revolution have a problem: the conditions in Russia were not mature. But who began socializing the enterprises? This was not due to a decision in the Central Committee. This was done by the workers themselves, very often against the will of the party leadership. What was one then supposed to do? To repress the workers and ban them from doing it? That was the choice.
The most positive feature of the Bolshevik party, the democratic Bolshevik party of 1917-20, is that it did not oppose these spontaneous processes in the working class. Trotsky predicted from 1906 onwards what common sense also maintains: that when the workers are the rulers on the streets, and in the state, they will try to express this change in the relationship of forces in the enterprises as well. That is unavoidable under non-repressive
Negt:: We should once more reconsider the conception of the working class as subject. The notion of the subject is an idealist, not a materialist one; it is a transcendental notion, which has already acted before the individuals who comprise it act. But we should not treat Central Committees or Politbureaus as transcendental subjects. That is one of the lessons to be learned from the deformation of the October
I don't believe that the October Revolution showed the only way for emancipation. The results of the French Revolution must also be considered anew; that revolution addressed the human rights dimension, though it still excluded a problem which is even more pressing for us, that of social equality.
There are results of the bourgeois political revolutions, which have to be included in the emancipatory stock of history, for example decentralization and division of power. This also includes the independence of the courts.
One cannot any more base oneself on a subject which, moreover, has changed so much. The working class of the 1920s and that of today are very different. To get in touch with them one must also take into account the different milieus of the workers. You don't reach them with revolutionary pathos. You can't give them an identity which is not theirs.
I think that the decisive reason for the breakdown of "really existing socialisms" was their lack of a subject. By this I mean that such an organization of society cannot only organize and appeal to the already emancipated interests, but that it must also try very hard to organize a process of education that reaches the alienated interests. Involvement must for us mean that people learn to walk on their own feet, as Rosa Luxemburg put it in the Critique of Social Democracy. Processes of self-regulation are necessary. I am not sure anymore whether the party-form is appropriate to deal with this problem or whether it requires movements of a compound character, which could participate more intensively in the things that are going on in the population and also in the working
Mandel: The working class as a historical subject is a materialist, not philosophical, category.
It has been defined - by Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, Engels — as those who are under the economic compulsion to sell their labour power. In practically all industrialized and semi-industrialized countries this category includes the overwhelming majority of those active in the economy - in some countries more than
Any other definition is idealistic and leads to the weirdest conclusions: in this way the Maoists once renamed the majority of the existing working class a bourgeoisie, on the grounds that they thought in a "bourgeois" way, and justified the repression of this working class as repression of the bourgeoisie. I don't subscribe to this kind of thing. and it has nothing to do with revolutionary pathos.
It is absolutely true that there are great fissures among the consciousness of different layers of the working class. The strategic conclusion flowing from this is that the main task of socialists is to bring about working class unity in action. When that has been accomplished 99% of what is necessary has been accomplished. *
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- EL SALVADOR